I think the safety vest is a good idea so they can find him when he gets sucked into that drain. That fellow doesn't seem too bright, I didn't watch the whole video, (is it really over an hr long?,) at first he was raking out the trash and dropping it right back into the water beside the drain to get sucked right back into the drain he pulled it from.
All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
He needs to have a longer handle on the rake and stand behind the concrete curb on solid ground to do the work. It was dumb to stand in the water beside that drain pipe imo. Why the safety vest? There's no one else out there running equipment. Maybe so they can find the body more easily?
I want to know how many gigabytes the original video recording is. He uploaded over one hour. I mean, WOW. That is a lot of storage devoted to using the wrong tool for the job.
For those not willing to devote an hour of their life to this video;
At 22:11 he decides to use his feet because as he says, "I better just do the whole thing with my feet, that's working out."
At 22:37 he says "It's slipping right through the grate as I do this." So as long as the grate holds he won't disappear into the hole.
At 22:44 he says "I can't believe this is actually working, but it is." Oh I can believe it is working, but I can't believe you're doing it this way.
At 22:50 if you cue up Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall (part 2)" you can see he dance shuffles around the grate pretty much in rhythm to Floyd's music. Not to mention the inclusion of the double negative in the song goes hand in hand with his choosing to stand in there and clear the obstruction.
At 23:10 he says "Everyone's always asking me why I don't use a rake. Why I go out with just my boots. It's SO much more efficient, when you're dealing with pressure." Don't believe me? Jump to 23:10 and listen for yourself
At 27:03 he trips over his own rake, but manages to stay standing and not make a splash.
At 37:19 the water really starts to move and he chooses to step back and then up and out of the water.
At 37:34 he says "Wow that thing is so strong, look at that. There's SO much current, it's bending the grate. I had to get off of that thing. Look at that! IT'S bending the GRATE! There's so much power. Oh wow. We're not getting back on that today. But the thing ... It ... It cannot collapse because there's a whole bunch of bolts holding it onto the cement so it can bow a little bit which is pretty scary because I can feel that. But there's no chance of it actually breaking." !!!!!!!
At 41:32 he says "We're gonna go take a look at the other side now. I bet there's rapids coming out of the other side. This was fun." Which is what I was thinking from the beginning. ALL of this water - what is downstream that is now getting a crapton of water in a short time period!
You'll have to listen from here. He is cracking me up - turbulence, lake, beaver dam, nobody lives down here, what just happened, look at all that muddy water, you say that on the camera - right, the water here is getting deeper, I want to get out of here, wow look how much water I got to come out of that thing, etc. He really is priceless - what he says!
Yikes, I cringed while watching segments of that. Very dangerous IMO, he's a lucky man. The hydraulic force there is incredible. If he slips, etc, he could be drowned in an instant...or sucked into the pipe, etc.